Re: [Configobj-develop] On the included tests

[Michael F. <fuz...@vo...>]

On 05/01/2011 16:38, Stefan Parviainen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was requested to include tests together with any patches I might
> make. After looking at the included tests I have to say that I'm a bit
> confused as to where and how the tests should be included. It seems
> like there are some doctests in the main source files, configobj.py
> and validate.py. Mostly similar, yet different tests can be found in
> test_configobj.py. Yet more tests can be found in the functionaltests
> subdirectory.
>
> Currently some tests are failing on Python 2.7 due to how the tests
> are written. Instead of fixing the same doctest bugs in 2 or 3
> different places, would it be better to take some time and consolidate
> all the different tests in one place? Where should the test be stored?
> Personally I prefer to store tests outside the main source code
> because I find it cleaner, but others might disagree.
>
Hey Stefan,

Short answer - best to add new tests as unit tests rather than doctests 
and patches to fix existing failures on 2.7 are appreciated but probably 
best done separately.

ConfigObj and validate were originally tested by doctests in the source 
code only. This got unwieldy (i.e. horrible) and most of the doctests 
were moved out of the configobj source and into their own file. Over 
time I came to hate doctests more and more and I write new tests as unit 
tests.

The tests that were left in the source code of configobj.py are only 
ones I thought were useful as "documentation" in the docstrings. It is 
possible that some of those should be deleted if they're duplicated in 
the test file and are a maintenance burden.

All the best,

Michael Foord

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